Creighton's superiority

His name was CousinE and he was a Creighton basketball fan.

He loved his Blue Jays and hated Nebraska, and boy was he obnoxious about it. He spent much of his time lurking around ESPN.com's message boards, picking fights with anyone who disagreed Creighton was God's gift to basketball and Nebraska was the worst team ever.

The mighty Creighton Blue Jays never did win that national championship CousinE always talked about.

I stopped posting on those message boards largely because they had become overrun with trolls like CousinE. I was there to discuss sports; they were there to instigate arguments by making fun of people and saying absurd things.

ESPN.com's only line of defense against trolls was a registration process that required a credit card confirmation. It didn't do much to deter troublemakers.

I even went as far as to join another sports chat forum with a more pretentious reputation. Unlike at ESPN.com, the administrators there would delete entire profiles and block users if they felt they were acting like trolls. That site ran a lot more smoothly and had fewer problems because the administrators were more intimately involved, reading the posts, deleting offensive material and locking unnecessary threads that maybe got off topic.

At the time, I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Just because you don't like what someone else is saying doesn't mean that it's any less valid. Or just because someone makes a controversial remark doesn't mean they have no place in the discussion.

But that only goes so far. Many of the trolls don't merely present their own opinions for the sake of fair and balanced discussion. Many of them are only there to cause trouble and therefore have no place in a rational discussion.

CousinE was a different kind of troll. I really didn't mind him in that respect. If he wants to believe Creighton is the best team in the history of the world, then that's his prerogative. I respect his right to voice that opinion. I just didn't expect to engage in any meaningful conversations with him.